


To The Stars and Back

by fish-with-a-pencil (DeadFeesh24)



Series: League of Realms AU [1]
Category: Kingdom Hearts, Naruto
Genre: A feminist remake of KH and Naruto, AU: fusion, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Crossover, Gratuitous Japanese, Haruno Sakura-centric, I reject your canon and substitute my own, Kairi (Kingdom Hearts)-centric, League of Realms AU, Multi, but not too much I promise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2019-12-25 08:36:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18257672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeadFeesh24/pseuds/fish-with-a-pencil
Summary: Once upon a time, Ueda Kairi was a junior keybearer, and a damn good one, if she said so herself.  She had her whole life lined up just the way she wanted it, with her two favorite boys at her side.  She was going to become a keyblade master, and protect all the people she loved.Then, one day, she woke up on an unknown world with no memory how she got there and no way to get home.This is her story.





	1. Once Upon a Time, In a World Far, Far Away

**Author's Note:**

> This is a heavily reworked version of Under the Same Sky. I had been thinking of just editing existing chapters, but after some thought, I realized the changes I needed to make were just too big, so I decided to begin again from the top.
> 
> I had been working on UtSS for such a long period of my life that my style kept changing from chapter to chapter, and not exactly for the better. It lacked consistency, and I felt it was dragging a little too much without getting to the actual conflicts that I had planned.
> 
> Also, if you like this AU and would like to talk to me and pals, I’ve made a discord! https://discord.gg/BKJG2Mb

She’s cold. So, so cold.

It feels her bone marrow has been replaced with ice, like she’ll never be warm again. Like someone had scooped out her soul and left her completely hollow inside. Even if she weren’t chained to a chair, Kairi isn’t sure if she can move at all. Her arms and legs felt like jelly. Like mana depletion.

Kairi had only experienced true mana-depletion once before, as a training exercise. As a keybearer, she needs to know the signs for her own safety, and right after, she’d been pumped full of intravenous ether and hot soup to perk her back up. It had been one of the most awful experiences she ever went through—Nothing compares to the feeling of having every last bit of life force drained from your body.

This time, she’s been drained for hours, maybe days, floating in and out of consciousness as strange men asked her the same questions over and over again. Where is she from? What is she doing here?

She can’t even be sure that she hasn’t given herself away already. Maybe in one of the grey points in her memory she blurted out the existence of other world, and that was why she’s still chained to a chair. She destabilized a foreign government. She’s like a virus none of them are immune to. The rest of her life is going to be spent locked up somewhere, whether it’s here or back on a League world. She’ll likely never see Sora or Riku again, either way.

The thought haunts Kairi in her fleeting moments of consciousness, that she can’t remember if she said goodbye, told them how much she loved them both. Thankfully, she isn’t awake often.

Every so often a mousy little man comes in to change out the glass bottle of her IV drip, and inject something into the line that makes her tongue itch and her vision go grey. She originally had thoughts of asking him how long she’d been in here, but every time he came back, Kairi didn’t have the strength to speak. Instead they watched each other warily and silently.

Kairi had thought that interrogation would be more interesting than a series of drugged out vignettes strung together with long periods of unconsciousness and/or barely-lucid boredom, but here she is, counting the freckles on the backs of her hands, again.

This time, he doesn’t give her more drugs, just another bottle of fluids. Kairi feels the water hit her vein, making her left arm sore and cold all over again.

The door slides open.

An old, bearded man strolls in, draped in white and red robes. Straight-backed as walks, he is unburdened by the age that is carved so deeply into his face. He reminds Kairi of her grandmother, walking gracefully in a twelve layer kimono, her chin held high. It’s one of the only memories she has left of her.

Just by looking at him she knows she won’t beat him in a fight, even if she weren’t handcuffed to a chair.

Two armed guards trail behind him, both wearing porcelain animal masks. A hound on the left and a bird on the right. Strapped to their backs are undecorated swords, with no handguards.

“Leave us.”

At the command, the two guards bow deeply, and turn to rapidly fading smoke.

The old man settles into the chair across from her, unhurried. Like a lake on a windless day, he’s placid, revealing nothing. “During your interrogation, one of my men found some unusual memories in your mind.”

Shit. “How?” Her face reveals so much, in comparison, she thinks.

“That’s not important now,” the old man says, looking at her carefully.

She’s being judged, but by what metric, Kairi doesn’t know.

He continues, “in your mind, he saw places that don’t exist. Landscapes where the sky was an impossible color, with buildings taller than the oldest trees. He saw you fight beasts that, I quote, ‘looked like something from a nightmare’s trash-heap’. Beings that smelled like black powder and ash, felt like death itself. What’s more, he saw you fight with a weapon that appeared in your hand without effort.”

Kairi tugs at her cuffs, like she could, with enough effort, lift her hand to the man’s face and shut him up. In her mind she begs him to stop talking all the same.

“He saw, among the beasts and weapons, other worlds. Didn’t he?” Somehow, that’s not a question.

“I...”

It’s against protocol to say anything, but does it count when someone else has already figured it out? Well, she won’t do it voluntarily, just in case.

“I’m sorry, did you say other world?”

The old man keeps going, pinning her down with his stare.“Are there any more of your kind here?”

“More of my…? I don’t think I follow. What do you mean by other world?”

The old man isn’t convinced. He must be of high authority to know beyond any doubt that worlds beyond his existed, perhaps even a king. Does this place have kings? “Do you know where you are?”

“I’m… Here?” She jiggles a restrained leg.

“What country were you in when you were brought in?”

“...I don’t remember,” Kairi hedges. “I’ve been in and out for so long.”

That was true. Her time in the cell stretches out in her mind like a desert. She can barely remember the past month. The first memory that comes to her is a simple mission to Traverse Town with Riku and Sora, one she knows went well, and after that there’s just a foggy, grey nothing. A distance further is when she woke up in the cell, but how much further, she could only guess at.

“Okay then, why don’t you name the five major villages then? Or maybe just your home village?”

His eyes are bright and expectant as she sputters, almost amused in a way that reminds her even more of Bāchan, of her grandmother.

“You...” She hesitates, dragging it out. “Wouldn’t know it. It’s very far away.”

“I see.” His face doesn’t give much away, but Kairi has a feeling that he just feels like calling her on her bullshit in the most sadistic way possible. “It must’ve been a trying journey.”

“Is it okay if I ask you questions?”

“I’ll answer what I can.”

There are too many questions to ask and not nearly enough air in the room to say them all, Kairi realized. She had to be selective. All she needed to know was her way forward, for now.

“Well, to start… Where am I, who are you, and, well… Hypothetically, if one was from another world, would you, I don’t know, send them home? Or is there a horrible punishment waiting for interlopers? Hypothetically,” she adds.

“No, we don’t have a way to get you home, and no, we’re not going to punish you.” The man scratches his beard, looking away for a moment. “I doubt anyone in this world has a means to return you home.”

He sighs. “You are in the village of Konohagakure—the Village Hidden in the Leaves—but that’s not all this world encompasses. There are other hidden villages, some specializing in different techniques and such, but none of them have that kind of power. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. I didn’t think I was going home soon.”

“As for your other questions, I’m the leader of this village, the Hokage. My name is Sarutobi. What comes next has yet to be decided. The intelligence squad has so far determined that you’re not an immediate threat, but that doesn’t mean you won’t do damage in the future, intentional or not. Even if you have your own orders not to reveal the existence of other worlds...”

“If other worlds exist at all,” she cuts in, “a person from another world might not need to say anything to get caught.”

“Exactly. Your presence itself could be disruptive to our way of life; you were raised in a completely different atmosphere, and even if people can’t pinpoint it, they’ll know something’s wrong. I cannot risk my people’s safety like that.”

Kairi nods, understanding. Although she hasn’t heard it in specific terms like that before, the basic message had been stressed to her over and over again in school, to the point of instinct: a world’s culture is delicate like blown glass, and off-worlders, for better or worse, are sledgehammers. This—showing up on a ‘virgin’ world unannounced like a rowdy party guest—was to be avoided at all costs. “I understand,” she murmurs.

The Hokage doesn’t exactly smile at her, but his posture thaws, and his face loses the hard edge he came in with. “I’m glad you understand. Wherever you’re from, it seems like they teach you… an abundance of caution. It’s wise.”

“Yeah,” Kairi says, unsure of what to do. She’s still mostly groggy from the lovely cocktail of drugs and mana-exhaustion, but she wants to give him a little reassurance. “That’s, like, lesson one, for people like me.”

“I don’t intend to leave you here,” says Sarutobi. “You’ll be assigned quarters here for the time being, while my advisors and I determine the course of action with the smallest risk to the village. With any luck, you’ll be allowed a place in the village within a month.”

A month, or more, underground without sun—the thought fills Kairi with dread. She tries to stay gracious nonetheless; she can’t imagine the kind of hoops the Hokage has to jump through to ensure his home’s safety.

She bows her head. “Thank you. I won’t lie and say I understand all the hard decisions you have to make to allow me in, but I appreciate the fact that you’re, I dunno, not leaving me in a pit to rot.”

“And I appreciate the fact that you’re being patient with me. Well, you don’t exactly have a choice, but I’m glad that you’re being rational.”

The Hokage rises, and leaves. The door slides shut, leaving Kairi with only her thoughts for company.

Hours later, right as Kairi starts to nod off once more, the medic comes back in with a prison guard, and removes the IV from her arm for good. Still restrained, she’s pulled along to another windowless room, this one with a cot, a single table and chair, and a separate bathroom. The manacles open with a single touch from the guard, and she’s shoved into the room.

On the table is a still steaming plate of curry rice, its fragrance inviting. She eats half, vomits it up, holds down the second half, and went to sleep, fitfully.

* * *

Kairi wakes from her messy rest feeling like there are eyes on her. Somewhere between her tosses and turns and half-memory half-nightmares, she feels the presence of another person in the room, without ever hearing the door open.

“You’re awake,” a soft voice, not rightly male or female, hums.

“You’re in my cell,” Kairi replies, rolling over. She aches everywhere, even between her toes.

A short, brown skinned woman leans against the wall. Her shoulders are broad, her waist bulked with muscle. In her stance Kairi sees a woman ready for battle, but also completely relaxed. She is barefoot.

“I’m Aihara. I’ve been assigned to mind you these next couple days, weeks, you know how it goes, and then to design a cover identity for your integration into our village.” Aihara steps forward carefully, her bare toes interpreting the floor before her feet settle. Looking to the woman’s face, her eyes, she sees that Aihara doesn’t look back. Her eyes are painted over and grey, locked on the wall across from her. Blind. “You’re moving into my rooms, kid. Nice to meet you.”

“It’s a good thing I didn’t unpack then,” Kairi says.

Aihara chuckles. “I have a feeling we’re gonna get along just fine. C’mon, let’s get you settled in a real apartment.”

* * *

Working with Aihara, Kairi gradually builds up details of her new life from a stripped down version of the truth. Weeks pass in confinement, as Aihara tried to do her best to unobtrusively observe her daily habits, her idiosyncrasies. She sleeps on a futon in a surprisingly homey tatami room for a blind woman in a secret, underground intelligence base, eats prepared meals that are delivered to the two of them, and tries to keep herself in shape, despite the small space.

In exchange, Aihara gives her details about the Village Hidden in the Leaves, little stories, cultural information. She shows Kairi her maps, textural maps, and inadvertently teaches her to read tanji, the raised wax dots that represent hiragana and katakana. It takes a little getting used to, especially with no kanji to read, not that she knows many kanji anymore, but in the end she learns the names of the neighboring countries, and roughly where their borders lie.

She learns that Aihara’s first name is Yuu, and that she’s a ninja, specifically assigned to her village’s intelligence agency.

Konoha, as it’s more colloquially called, is one of five great ninja villages, military towns that supply their soldiers, shinobi, to the leader of their country. Each village has different methods for training their troops, different forms of the magic they called ninjutsu, but they all start training them in childhood, in dedicated academies. Aihara herself started training at age five, and graduated at ten, which was early for her village.

It isn’t all that different from keybearer training, although Kairi hadn’t been prepared to kill other people, just Heartless, which were already pretty much dead anyway. Or not alive to begin with, depending on who you ask. She is still, hypocritically, horrified at military training starting at age five, even though that’s when she got her first toy keyblade, and started training to use magic.

After the second week, Aihara allows her to head down to the sparring rings on the floor below, but only when no one is around to see her, and only as long as Kairi doesn’t speak to anyone if they do. As it turns out, it’s for a good reason.

“Feel free to use that strange weapon of yours,” she says, as she throws Kairi into the ring, “I want to see how well you remember your cover story.”

She summons her keyblade, and then remembering Aihara can’t see her summon it, says, “okay, I’m ready. Did you want to feel it first?”

“Are you seriously offering the other combatant your weapon? Your extremely unique weapon?”

“It’s not like you could steal it. It would just come back into my hand when I tell it to.” She presses it into Aihara’s hand, and then makes it return to her own.

Her head cocks to the left as she draws her own sword. “Huh. Neat.”

Then Aihara’s upon her, sword raised to strike. Kairi didn’t even see her move, but blocks just in time to avoid getting her face cut in half.

“Your name?”

“Ueda Kairi.” She tries to pull her keyblade down to hook Aihara’s sword with the teeth of the blade, but can’t manage it before Aihara hops away, quiet as ever on her feet.

Another swift overhead strike. “Age?”

“Sixteen.”

“Okay.” She pulls back and switches tactics, trying to break Kairi’s stance with rapid hits from different angles, pushing her back toward the edge of the ring. “Where are you from, Ueda?”

“I… belonged to a small samurai clan to the south, near the Land of Waves. I don’t remember my clan name anymore—my teacher gave me my family name.”

“Good. Don’t hesitate next time. What happened to them?”

“They all died when I was young. My uncle killed them. I escaped before he could find me.”

Aihara nods her approval, then flickers out of sight. Her next question comes from behind Kairi, as she strikes her kidney with the hilt of her sword. Not hard enough to do serious damage, but enough to make her stagger forward back into the center of the ring. “How did you get to Konoha?”

“I honestly don’t remember. I think we passed into the Land of Fire on our way to the temple I used to live in, but we must’ve been attacked by someone that took away my memory.”

They circle each other for a moment. Or rather, Kairi circles Aihara, who follows her footsteps with her ears. Her tells are different than the ones Kairi was used to watching for; her eyes don’t move. Her feet move instead, toes sweeping in small circles before she lands, with a hand out, up, near her hip.

“Do you consider yourself samurai, Ueda?”

Kairi lunges forward, almost managing to her sparring partner in the side. “I consider myself a swordswoman.”

“Perfect.” In a smooth moment, Aihara takes another step forward and locks hilts with her, popping the keyblade from her hands. Kairi dismisses it before it hits the ground. “I think we’re ready to take this festival sideshow on the road. Wanna go get dinner? I think they’ve got roast sweet potatoes...”

“If you think it’s okay,” Kairi replies.

“Sure, sure. It’ll be fun!” Aihara’s already out of the ring and meandering down the hall, her left hand pressed to the wall for navigation.

Kairi hurries to follow her guide down the hall, up three flights of stairs and into the canteen.

The canteen doesn’t have any windows, just like the rest of the building, but a mural of a stone monument makes it a little cheerier, and the brightly colored banners hanging from the food stations do their part as well. The floor and walls are still poured concrete and stone, but unlike the endless halls below, the floor here is glitters with multicolored glass tiles.

A handful of soldiers call out to Aihara as the two of them enter, but otherwise the canteen is mostly empty. One woman in particular hurtles into them and cleaves herself to Aihara’s side.

“Yuuchan, you’ve been away too long! I thought my heart was going to break without you, and now I know why! You’ve replaced me with a cuter, younger model!” Aihara’s clingy companion is plump, with wild blue-black curls and eyes like pools of ink. Instead of wearing her forehead protector around her forehead like a sensible person, hers is pinned to the sleeve of her uniform.

“Ueda, this is Uchiha Koharu. Koharu, this is Ueda Kairi, the girl we found at the border.” Aihara, with Koharu firmly attached to her side, lines up for food. She passes a tray to Koharu, who passes it along to Kairi.

“Nice to meet you, Kairi! Good to see you’re still in one piece.”

Kairi bows stiffly. “Nice to meet you too, Uchiha-san.”

“So formal!” Koharu’s rough hand ruffles her hair, calluses catching slightly. “Koharu is fine—you’ve got the Yuuchan seal of approval.”

“Approval?”

Aihara’s free hand dances along the buffet counter in search of a serving spoon. “Koharu seems to think that I’m a good judge of character. Somehow. We’ve been trying to have her head checked for years.”

“Sweet potatoes are on your right,” Koharu says, “cucumber salad on your left—come on, you need some vitamins--”

“Sweet potatoes are very nutritious,” replies Aihara, piling her plate high.

“You need vegetables!”

“Sweet potatoes are vegetables...”

“They’re a starch, Yuuchan. You need something green.”

With a lot of sighing and grumbling, Aihara puts a single scoop of cucumber on her plate. “Fine, mom, what else must I have in my very healthy dinner?”

The two women banter back and forth for a while, fighting over every side dish affectionately. Kairi tunes them out and fixes herself a small plate of mackerel, chestnut rice and soup. When they get to their table, Aihara immediately uses Kairi’s lack of vegetables as an excuse to pawn off all her cucumber on her.

“So... How’s your stay been in our wonderful intelligence complex so far?”

She puts her bowl of soup down. “Well, uh, not so bad, I guess. I don’t have anything really to compare it to, but Aihara-san is pretty nice. Wouldn’t like to go through interrogation again.”

“Uh huh, uh huh, makes sense. Where were you coming from? Got anybody back home that misses you?”

“I don’t actually remember. I know I was traveling west with my sensei and my teammates, so we must’ve just been passing through Fire Country… After that it’s just blank. As far as ‘back home…’ My team was my home, I guess.”

“And you don’t know where your team went? You poor thing.” With nimble fingers Koharu pilfers a chunk of sweet potato and pops it in her mouth.

“I hope they’re not hurt,” Kairi adds, barely lying. Something threw her worlds away; she could only hope that, that something didn’t do the same to Riku and Sora.

“I’m sure they’re fine,” says Koharu. “Hey, just to take your mind of things for a little bit… How’re you liking the food?”

“It’s really good. I love chestnut rice.”

“Have you ever been to Konoha before?”

“No, I haven’t. We passed through Fire Country a few times, but Sensei always kept us away from the village, didn’t wanna make waves. What’s it like?”

“Well, not to brag, but it’s pretty great.”

* * *

A few days after her test in the canteen, the soldiers set Kairi not unlike a wild animal. They transport her with a bag over her head, and dump her, plus one bag of clothing they ‘found’ with her, outside a large apartment complex, where they told her beforehand that she’d be staying. A building for teens and children, they had said.

Before they’d set off, they’d given Kairi another set of clothes to change into, a worn cotton set of hakama and kosode, apparently the standard for samurai around here, topped with a pale pink haori they just happened to find in the lost and found.

They fit well enough, and they’re certainly more comfortable than the sweaty training clothes she’d been wearing for weeks. She doesn’t know what they did to her old clothes, but they didn’t give them back.

The garb reminds her of the summers she spent in the Temple of Hearts back home, except there the hakama were orchid pink and the kosode cream colored, instead of two different shades of green. It fits, especially with how much she’s pulling from her memories of the temple; the traditional language, her behavior.

The soldier watching her yanks the bag off of her head, although she doesn’t feel like she’s walked very far at all. After not seeing the sun in close to a month, the sunset makes her eyes water, but she stares a little too directly anyway. A tall tree dapples the white stucco apartment complex and the ground near it in spots of shadow and red-gold light. It is beautiful, even though the complex itself is bare of ornamentation.

Outside the building another soldier—ninja, she now knows—smokes a cigarette. She waves lazily at her, blowing a stream of smoke out her mouth. Kairi closes the distance, waving. She knows she’s supposed to go slow, look a little dignified, but disorientation makes her stagger anyway.

“You must be the new girl. Nobody told me they found a shrine maiden.” She takes another drag.

When she speaks again, smoke pours out her mouth like river water. Whatever is in the cigarette doesn’t smell like tobacco. It’s savory, for lack of a better term. “The world takes all kinds, I guess.”

Kairi adjusts her top through the holes in the sides, pulling the kosode to perfect order. She does look a little like a shrine maiden; apparently they’ a multiversal constant. “I’m a swordswoman. Not a shrine maiden.”

“Where’s your sword, then?”

“Would you let a random, trained foreigner keep their deadly weapon if you had a choice?”

Smoke puffs out of her nose as she chuckles. “Point taken. I’m Yamazaki Megumi, I run the barracks around here.”

“Ueda Kairi.” She bows shallowly, barely more than a nod. “Are they housing me in the barracks?”

“Yeah.”

“Do… You live here? In the…?”

“Yeah.”

Yamazaki shoulders the door open and grinds out the last of her cigarette right at the threshold.

The barrack’s lobby reeks of pine-cleaner. Plain, scrubbed-until-dull tile floors run from white wall to white wall, and the furniture is all worn, but in serviceable condition. The lights, cheap florescents, paint the whole place with a pallor of uncomfortable green.

A couple children and teens laze about, some as young as six. All the kids, young and old, stare at her as she walks in.

“They’re so young. Do they all live here?”

“Right… You probably don’t know much about shinobi affairs… About six years ago our village was attacked by a beast who caused massive damage, and with it, casualties. Lotta orphans, not so much families that had the means to adopt. This building was originally barracks for jounin, but we had to move them all out to make a place for all of the kids to stay. Those young ones by the fountain? They’re the lucky ones, the ones who we could find breastfeeding mothers for… Well, homes for, breast milk itself had nothing to do with it, the doctors said. The ones who stayed in the orphanage died because there weren’t enough people to hold them. Apparently babies can die from that.”

A brief, haunted look passes over the young soldier’s face. She couldn’t be older than nineteen, if that. She’d have been barely a teen when all this happened. She would’ve just been old enough to understand, and see, the bloodshed firsthand.

During her briefing Kairi had been told about some kind of attack on the village, but Aihara had been tight-lipped about the exact details. As an isolated wanderer, Kairi isn’t supposed to know anything about it.

“Anyhow yeah, there’s a whole bunch of little kids, and they stay on the bottom floors. Me’n some other jounin watch over the youngest ones. Some of them think I’m their mom. I mean, I changed their diapers and everything, so I guess it’s close enough.”

Just then a tiny girl patters up to Yamazaki, sucking on her thumb. She holds up a balding plush cat, one paw badly torn at the shoulder.

“What a battle wound, huh,” Yamazaki says. She looks completely different, as she talks to the girl. “If I get you the sewing kit, do you think you can do the field medicine on your own?”

The little girl smiles a wide, gap-toothed grin and nods.

“Atta girl–” she moves to a nearby cabinet and fishes out a tiny plastic sewing kit– “remember, don’t run with any of this. I’ll be back in a second if you need help.”

They watch the little girl return to her seat on the couch and studiously start repairing her toy.

“We found little Shizuka-chan as a toddler. She was in a bad way when we found her. Now she doesn’t speak much in the way of anything, but she’s a real smart cookie. Twice as kind too.”

“I’m so sorry,” Kairi murmurs. “I can’t even imagine… Six years isn’t enough for anyone to recover from this kind of devastation. The fact that you’re ready to offer any kind of hospitality to me is...”

There’s a bloody, exhausted darkness behind Yamazaki’s eyes, the same that she’s seen in Master Aqua’s, and even her own, at times. “It’s because we went through this that we’re letting you in, Ueda. We’re tired of watching lost children die alone.”

This is a place where children had seen war, and adults watched it happen.

“I can’t thank you enough, really.”

The silence between them expands uncomfortably, as Yamazaki goes for another cigarette, realizes she’s indoors, and lets her hand fall limply to her side. For a moment her hands twitch with nothing to do, and she shoves them into the pockets of her vest. “It’s fine.”

They switch to lighter conversation as they walk around the barracks together, talking about curfew, the cafeteria hours, and most of all, that Kairi has been gifted with one of the only single apartments in the whole building, because she’s older than almost all the residents.

The whole building is set up such that that the youngest children are on the ground floor, and each floor after that has older and older kids. Almost all of them are orphans, and the remainder were young teens and older who live away from their families to get a taste of independence. Being one of the oldest, Kairi is assigned to the top floor, with only two other residents being her neighbors. It’s the only floor that was co-ed, although they still shared the separate bathrooms on the floor below.

When they run out of rules and necessary information, they just stop talking. Filling the silence feels wrong. Yamazaki just gives Kairi the key to her apartment, and doesn’t bother to make sure she gets in okay.

Kairi walks into her new apartment alone, throws her bag on the table, and cries.


	2. Out and Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kairi meets her neighbor. Sora and Riku run away from home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As it turns out, there’s not a lot of concrete detail about Anko’s backstory. Oh shucks. How awful.  
> Also, content warning for alcohol use; the characters who do are of age for Konoha, but the drinking age there is sixteen, so take caution if that bothers you. Oh, and there’s more weed mentions, because I kind of thought it’d be interesting for a place where many people would probably have chronic pain to also have legal marijuana.
> 
> Oh, and just so you know, since, well, earth countries as we know them don’t exist, I’ve changed the names of languages. In Konoha, people speak japanese, which is called Yama-go (山語, literally mountain language) in this universe and in Land of Departure, where the keyblade academy is, they speak mostly English, which is called Radiant, like Radiant garden. Land of Departure actually has some language politics I’d love to get into here, but I’ll keep it short: country folk speak Yama-go, higher class people speak Radiant, due to the fact that the league of realms was established by people originally from Radiant Garden.
> 
> Sorry this chapter took so long, my life is super upside down, as always. I also don’t have any beta readers, so I do all edits myself. If anyone wants to beta this radioactive dumpster fire please let me know yo.

Polaris Academy prides itself on the historical, yet timeless architectural designs of its campus. All the buildings were built with the same kind of limestone and marble as the original four, mined from the bottom of Moonstone Bay, down by the capital. Centuries ago when they built the place, teams of people dragged blocks one by one, up to the hill outside the young city, where new keybearers could watch over everyone. It was always intended to double as a fortress.

Just in case.

Three weeks after the “Accident,” as they are calling it, Sora finds himself completely unable to stay still, and thus wanders the long marble halls looking for somebody to stop him and his racing mind. Without Kairi, he feels adrift, unmoored.

“I mean, I can get the whole, ‘wait while we circle the wagons’ thing,” Sora says, looping around columns as he paces up and down the hall. “But they’re doing a whole lot of waiting, and very little wagon-circling. Don’t they want to find her?”

Riku sits on the floor, underneath a stained glass window. Where the shock had electrified Sora’s legs into constant motion, it froze Riku in place. Staying upright isn’t a possibility. “Could you stand still for, like, five seconds? You’re making me dizzy.”

Sora looks at him incredulously, but does pause to do it. “You’re kidding, right? Kairi is gone and the League isn’t doing a single thing about it! How could I stay still?”

“Of course they’re not, dumbass. Why the hell would they launch a recovery mission for just one junior? We don’t even know where she is. If she ended up on an allied world, then someone’ll find her. If not, how would we even search for her?”

“I don’t know! I just...” Sora’s face crumbles. He still can’t quite grasp how they’d lost her so quickly. It doesn’t even feel like a bad dream, it’s more like a passing thought, where his mind is giving him the worst, just to prepare. “All I know is that we can’t do nothing.”

“You just know we can’t do nothing,” Riku repeats, agreeing but not quite.

“Exactly. We can’t do nothing.”

Riku stands and pulls Sora to his chest. Then sits again, taking his boyfriend with him. “Just sit for a moment and think with me. We need a plan.”

“Like there’s a way to plan for this,” he grumbles. “We pretty much gotta start going to worlds at random.”

“Yeah, but that’s still a plan. It’s shitty, but that’s technically a plan.”

“Do we wanna bother checking league worlds?”

Riku shakes his head. “We’d’ve heard from her by now if she was. Kairi doesn’t do subtle.”

“You know that means we’ve only got one way we can travel though.”

“I know,” Riku says. He stares at his hands like they did him wrong.

Sora turns around and kneels, looking Riku right in the eyes. His hands sandwich Riku’s scruffy cheeks. Neither of them have shaved in days. “If you’re not ready, that’s a whole different animal. We can figure out something else, take a few days to gather ourselves. Bully the league into doing something.”

“We don’t have time to be ready.”

"Riku—"

"No. Look, it's almost been three weeks. Kairi probably had enough mana left to conjure water, but if she’s on a barren world, she's already starving."

"Statistically speaking, that's unlikely. Even Agrabah, an entire desert world, has edible cacti and meat. I know this feels urgent, but we do have some time."

Riku pulls Sora’s hands away from his face. "The whole optimism spiel really isn't helping right now."

"Fine then. Let's get packing."

* * *

Someone is knocking at her door.

_A ~~dream~~ memory._

_knock knock!_

_She didn’t want to answer the door. She just wanted everyone to leave her alone so she could die in piece. Nobody should’ve ever rescued her._

_Mama’s gone._

_Papa’s gone._

_Baa-chan._

It isn’t surprising that she’d fallen asleep at the living room table, in a puddle of her own tears. It’s been a rough couple of weeks, a good cry was reasonable. In the dark, her tears, trapping moonlight, glow silver.

A woman’s voice calls from beyond the door. “Hey, uh, hello?" There’s no muffle, the door’s too thin. As are the walls. "New girl?”

_Just leave! Go!_

“Hello? Are you there?”

_“Leave me to die! This was a mistake, I was supposed to die,” Kairi cried out._

“Hold up, I’m coming.” Kairi sweeps her tears off the table. Her knees protest getting up so suddenly.

_“No! Go away!”_

“I brought some food! I thought you might want something a little nicer than that cafeteria slop...”

_“Please? We brought cookies!” A boy’s voice called._

_Kairi’s stomach growled loudly._

_She hadn’t eaten in so long; every time she tried, her mouth felt stopped-up, like she couldn’t swallow. The guards had tried everything from her favorite stew to sweets, nothing helped. Even if she couldn’t eat though, it might be nice to have some company her own age, she thought. She missed playing._

_There was nobody to play with anymore, though._

_Everyone was gone._

It had been sunset when she nodded off, so she knows it has to be some kind of dark out, but seeing the room in planes of shadow and moonlight throws her off balance. She hadn’t slept that long, right?

Kairi slides the door open without too much trouble. Green fluorescent light spills into the room.

_“She might be sleeping, stupid! Go bother her tomorrow!”_

_At the door was a silver haired boy, and a shorter, brown haired one._

No. No, there wasn’t. Isn’t. No Riku, no Sora.

Instead, a purple haired girl and a brown haired boy stand at the door, the boy’s arms piled high with dishes, utensils, containers, the girl’s full of vegetables and meat.

“She was sleeping, Anko! You should’ve just waited until tomorrow,” the boy hisses.

The girl, Anko, thrusts out a cast iron pot for Kairi to grab. “Hope you like sukiyaki.”

“Come on Anko, let’s go!”

Kairi wraps her hand around the handle of the pot. “No, it’s fine, I just lost track of time, is all. I haven’t even had dinner yet.”

“Are you sure?” The boy squints at her while the girl grin, revealing sharpened canines. Roughly, they’re her age, most likely the neighbors Yamazaki mentioned.

“I love sukiyaki,” Kairi says. She slides away from the door and elbows the light switch on. “I’m Ueda Kairi, by the way.”

“I’m Umino Iruka.” The boy bows to her lightly, and walks past her. “And she’s Mitarashi Anko. It’s nice to finally meet you.” From there he immediately heads to the table and starts setting it. Kairi worries for the tatami for a moment, but both Umino and Mitarashi have apparently arrived barefoot.

“Finally,” Kairi asks.

“Yeah,” Mitarashi answers. “Yamazaki told us, three, maybe four, days ago that a foreigner our age was coming to live in the barracks. I mean, I was super hyped about it, but Iruka was, like, crazy worried about making a ‘proper welcome.’” Having put down all her goods, she settles herself onto the tatami, lounging with all the confidence of a big cat.

“What, a party?” Kairi glances to Umino, who frantically waves his hands.

“No, I was more worried Anko was going to break into your apartment and scare the shit out of you. That’s what she thinks being friendly is all about.”

“I get curious, okay? A mysterious girl from out in the country shows up passed out on our border? There’s some juicy gossip there, I just know it.”

“I totally get it,” Kairi replies. “Sensei always said my curiosity was going to get me in hot water one day, myself. I consider it a virtue.”

“You hear that Iruka? Kairi here thinks my curiosity is a virtue.”

He rolls his eyes. “Statistically speaking, someone has to.”

“Speaking of curiosity,” Kairi asks, “how do you two know each other?” She can see they’re closer than neighbors by the way they bicker with each other. When Umino leans back from setting the table, Mitarashi leans against his side and tucks stray hairs behind his ear.

Umino leans back into her. “Anko and I have been friends since I moved into the barracks. Well, we weren’t friends in the beginning, but I guess we kind of grew on each other over the years.”

The air fills with the smell of cooking beef, as Umino starts laying out thin strips of meat on bottom of the cast iron pot.

“Oh! I just remembered!" Using her friend as leverage, Mitarashi launches herself up and out the door. A moment later she returns triumphantly with a bottle of sake in one hand, and three lacquered cups in the other. “A meal like this just isn’t complete without some fine drink!”

Umino squints at the label. “Where the hell did you get that?”

“I got a bonus from that last mission that went to shit. As it turned out they had to up-rank it, so we all got a thirty thousand ryo extra. It went straight toward this baby.” She winks at Kairi. “You’re sixteen, right?”

“Yep!” Master Ventus probably won’t be too thrilled about her drinking, but what kind of host would she be if she spurned her guest’s wonderful hospitality? Out of politeness, she has to at least have a glass or two.

“I feel like I should say something about this,” Umino grumbles, eyes locked on the bottle. “But I can’t bring myself to say no to something this good.”

“The only ‘something’ you need to say is ‘cheers!’”

* * *

  
_Master Ventus,_

_First, please know this isn’t your fault. You’ve been the perfect teacher we could ever ask for, and we hope you can forgive us for what we’ve done. It’s actually your teachings about teamwork and loyalty that have lead us to our decision to leave and find Kairi, so… please be proud! And don’t be too mad, please._

_We will be back once we find her, and you can chew us out then!_

_With love,_

_-Sora and Riku._

_P.S. Don’t come looking for us. If something goes wrong, we don’t want you getting in trouble because of your miscreant students. The League needs you._

“I dunno, Riku, did I make it too sappy?” Sora rereads the letter carefully. Their fate rests in its hands, to a degree.

Riku says, “it’s… very you?” His chin rests on Sora’s head, as they do sometimes, both in need of physical comfort, to know that the other is there.

“It’s sappy.”

“Well,” Riku hedges, but doesn’t find anything else to say.

Sora snorts.

“But it works.” He presses a kiss to the top of Sora’s hair. “Master Ven knows you’re a sap. It’s like, an identity confirmation.”

“Heh. Yeah, I guess.” Sora gazes deep into Riku’s eyes. “So, how’re you doing?”

Inside he’s been hollowed out, no emotion. Light as tissue. If a breeze passed him, he'd crumple and float away. But that wouldn't be so bad, would it? He might end up wherever Kairi went.

“I feel a little numb.” He barely feels at all, but that’s a little too much to tell Sora. He’s a ghost.

He’s already dead.

“You know,” Sora replies, tilting his head so they look each other in the eye, “we don’t have to leave right yet. If you’re not feeling up to it, we could...”

“No. I’m ready.”

He feels more in control than he’s felt his entire life. The tumultuous currents of darkness are suddenly smooth flows, easy to traverse.

He doesn’t feel anything.

Before, he thought that nervousness was the safety. Always he'd been cautious, aware of how devastating a single slip could be. It’s not about fear or consciousness now, he knows. Darkness feeds on emotion, on the things that propel people. Darkness feeds on the things that feed people. Energy itself.

At the absence of emotion, he’s found control.

“I can do this.”

“Right.” Sora folds the letter in thirds, sealing it with an enchanted wax stamp. No one would be able to open it but Master Ventus. If anyone else tried, it’d burn them. “Then, shall we get going?”

The boys don’t bother locking the door as they leave. Even latching it would make more noise than necessary.

Gold light pools in the hall between columns, blindingly bright compared to their dawn facing dorm room. No one is in the dorms at this hour, but they still sneak out the fire escape instead of the main entrance. A few students can be seen relaxing on the green, enjoying the sunset. No one looks twice at Sora and Riku.

“We don’t have a lot of time before dinner,” Sora says. Before role-call, when they’ll officially be noted as missing. Until then, no one would notice that they’re gone.

Trying to look inconspicuous as possible, they hurry to the science building.

_* * *_

  
One meal and one bottle of fine sake later, Kairi, Umino and Mitarashi lie on their backs in the living room, watching the ceiling tilt slowly, gently. Sometime in the evening they had opened the sliding door to the balcony, and now the room is cool with early autumn air, just enough to chill the tips of their noses.

Mitarashi rolled over, looking into Kairi’s eyes. Her hair shimmers over her shoulders like spilled ink. “We should go get dango.”

From Kairi’s other side, Umino groans. “Now?”

“Yes, now! It’s such a lovely night out! Right, Kairi?”

“Why’re you asking her?”

“Why not?” Mitarashi wiggles herself up, next to Kairi. The grin she wears is softer with alcohol, but still bright with the mischief Kairi herself was known for. “You want something sweet, right?”

Kairi shrugs. “I mean, I don’t think I’m sleeping anytime soon anyway.” Between the nap and the unfamiliar surroundings, she’d be lucky if she got an hour of rest. “And I haven’t had dango in ages...”

“Perfect!” In a second, Kairi’s world lurches from lying down, to standing, to clinging to Mitarashi, who decided the best course of action was to yank Kairi up by the armpit. “Ooh, you’re so warm,” Mitarashi coos.

“And you’re nice and cold…” From a young age she knew she always ran warm, and to her pleasantly sake-fogged brain, tucking her flushed face into the crook of Mitarashi’s cool neck is an excellent idea. For a moment they just stand there, giving and taking body heat.

“A perfect symbiosis,” Umino grumbles. “Why don’t you two lie back down instead of dragging me out for midnight desserts?”

“You can stay here if you want, it’s not like there's much to steal," Kairi replies. “Not that’d I’d think you’d do anything.”

“And let you two break curfew without supervision? That sounds like it’ll fun to explain to Yamazaki.”

“I tried to stop them,” Mitarashi mocks, “Yamazaki-senpai, they just wouldn’t listen to me!”

“We’ve already been reamed twice for sneaking out, the last thing we need is for Senpai to know that we got the new girl drunk and took her out on the town her first night!”

“I’m not that drunk!”

“Uh huh, sure.”

The argument soon dissolves into background noise and Kairi wanders to the balcony looking out over the darkened town. The moon is high in the sky, the stars brighter than she's seen in a long time. Despite that, the sky is dark, darker than she’s seen in a long time. There’s no orange glow from the capitol city, no yellow veins of lit roads, just shadows.

Below a shredded awning, across the street from the barracks, something gathers. At first it just looks like a shift in the light and resulting shade, but then it draws itself up three dimensional, blacker than the night sky.

Then, a man steps out.

Or perhaps a woman; it’s hard to tell under the black long coat they wear. Under their hood, the darkness is completely opaque.

They pause at the corner, looking both ways before slipping down another street, completely unfazed by their surroundings. What could someone like that be doing here?

Only one explanation comes to mind; they’re her extraction.

She plants her hands on the balcony and vaults over. A “samurai” probably shouldn’t be able to slow her descent like she does, but it doesn’t even cross her mind. Someone had finally come for her.

"Damn girl!" Cantilevered at the hips, Mitarashi leans over the railing, feet kicking behind her. She allows herself to tip over, head first into the air, and tumbles twice before landing neatly on her feet. “You ronin really know your shit, don’t ya?"

Umino lands a second later, saying something scolding, but Kairi, already at the corner, can’t hear him. She watches the stranger, careful to stay unnoticed.

Perhaps they were ordered to look covertly, hence the dark corridor. It wouldn't do much good to arrive with an entourage of keybearers. Magic of all sorts could be used to find her, no need for a ruckus.

"Kairi,” Umino calls behind her.

She keeps moving.

The stranger doesn’t seem to notice her at all, no matter how close she gets. By the time she catches up with them, turns down the last alley they did, they’re already gone. The only traces remaining are footprints in the loose dirt, and the bitter-sour-sweet smell of dark magic in the air.

Whoever they are, they hadn’t given a crap about Kairi.

"Kairi!"

She turns around. Mitarashi and Umino tumble around the corner.

The two of them look at her like they’re seeing her for the first time all over again, looking for details they'd missed.

“Just… a sanity check here. Did either of you see somebody in a black cloak?"

"I did," Mitarashi says.

Umino shakes his head.

"Okay, one outta two. Probably not nuts…" She slaps her palms against her thighs. "Cool. Right. Not nuts. Hopefully."

Definitely a black cloak then. Definitely someone from another world.

Samurai-apprentice Kairi returns to her mind, as she shakes out her keybearer instincts. "Sorry for running off like that. I thought they were someone I'd seen before."

"Where?" Mitarashi stares down to the dead end of the alley. "That dude was creepy as fuck. Who wears coats like that?"

'Someone who needs to travel in the space between worlds,' she doesn’t say. "I think I remember seeing them before the, uh, incident. I thought I felt somebody watching us."

"Well, that's some trick they've got, disappearing like that." Mitarashi inspects the footsteps, how they end abruptly.

"Yeah," Kairi murmurs. "Let's just go get dango."

Suddenly, all she wants are sweets.

* * *

  
Riku's chest hurts. Despite the fact he hadn't really been exerting himself, the pain spreads smooth and slow, up his shoulders, down his arms.

Creeping through the basement of the science building, the pain kept coming, dull and like a drumbeat. It drags him down, draining his energy. After they got out of here they could rest, but not yet.

Sora taps him on the shoulder. "Are you sure it's this way?"

"I'm sure." He's been down here before dozens of times to pick up protection for training with dark magic. The closet where they keep the travel coats is at the end of the hall. Two won't be missed, not before it’s too late.

Only half the lights are on; from dinner to morning all the campus buildings are kept on low power mode, aside from the dorms. Down here in the science building, a few labs are still lit up bright by those who like to burn the candle at both ends. Whatever experiments they’re doing were more important than dinner.

The science students were always fascinated with Riku. It’s easy to see how some of them bury themselves in their discoveries…

The storage closet isn’t locked, just closed, with the sign-out sheet taped to the door. Someone stole the pen.

Sora nudges Riku in the ribs. "Guess we can't even sign them out, huh.”

"Shh. There's still people here." He shoves a coat into Sora’s hands, and pulls on his own.

Sora pulls the coat over his head.

"There's a zipper for a reason, moron," Riku hisses.

“Sorry, sorry...” Sora straightens himself out. “I always wanted to wear these things. You always look so cool in yours.” Not that he’s ever said that before; he never gushes about how pretty Riku is. Not him, nope. He totally doesn’t watch Riku shrug on his own jacket and lift his hand to the back wall coolly, wondering to himself how he always looks like that.

A dark corridor blooms in front of them. “C’mon, I’m getting us to that border-world.”

Sora goes first and Riku follows, not bothering to look behind him.

They don’t see their least favorite professor come up behind them, a relatively young man named Xehanort who looks like he’d seen the wrong end of a taffy puller. One spidery hand is clasped around a cup of coffee, and the other twirls a few strands of his long hair round and round. He’d been doing some late night research that didn’t need prying eyes, and when he saw the boys he was almost relieved to see them skip world, rather than snoop into his work.

“Oh dear,” Professor Xehanort says to himself. “Looks like the boys are up to some mischief.”

 

* * *

  
Mitarashi leads them down darkened back streets and over rooftops to the neon-lit hybrid tea shop-pub Kintsugi. Only open during the late night, early morning hours, it’s her favorite spot for treats; nothing good happens after midnight. The proprietor, a chubby, grinning lady with senbon tucked in her hair, is amused by these sorts of naughty things, Mitarashi tells her.

The white, flax noren above the entryway brushes the top of Kairi’s head. “And by naughty things you mean…?”

Inside, the store doesn’t seem particularly debaucherous. Blue and pink neon lights tangle across the ceiling like worms, dripping candy colored light down the walls. Porcelain masks hang on the walls along with tapestries and ukiyo-e paintings wherever the spare room exists. In the naked gaps in between, even more things are thrown in; colorful children’s toys, cellophane bags of candy, anything remotely bright is there, glued, nailed, pinned to the wall.

As she slipps her shoes off, Kairi realizes that someone had even splattered the tatami floor with pink paint.

“Oh you know, this and that,” Mitarashi says.

The scattered patrons all turn to stare at them. More specifically, they stare at her. The focus itches her all over. “That tells me literally nothing.”

Her nose however, fills in the details. The same smell as before, Yamazaki’s cigarette, the brief taste of something savory deep in her throat; except now it fills her whole nose and mouth with flavor.

“Oh, okay.” She pauses. She looks at Mitarashi. “Is this legal here?”

Her humble guide seesaws her hands and shoulders. “Yeah, pretty much. Well, I mean, you’re only supposed to smoke after eighteen, but eh.”

Not the best answer, but one that she can live with. “I mean, it’s not like I haven’t gotten stoned before. But I’ve only been here a day... I probably shouldn’t.”

Umino stares at Mitarashi from the doorway. “We’re not smoking.”

“No, no, of course not!”

Owner-proprietor Iitaka Kasuga puts them at a table toward the back, by the window. She lights two oil burners for teapots, and slaps down out three menus to the table before knocking Mitarashi in the back of the head.

She rubs the back of her head. “Not tonight, anyway.”

Iitaka eyes Kairi.

“I’m just in it for sweets,” Kairi defends.

The menu is handwritten and extensive. On the front are sweets, packed in slightly less tiny brushstrokes than the tea and hard drinks selection in the center pages, which are bigger still than the terrifying array of marijuana strains that litter the rear cover. As it stands, Kairi can only read about two thirds of the menu, the rest are kanji she hadn’t read in forever.

To be honest, most of her reading and writing is in Radiant, not Yama-go anyway. If pressed on the stroke order of any given kanji besides her name, Kairi would probably fail.

On the bright side, the sweets portion is perfectly legible, and she luxuriates over the treats while Mitarashi and Umino bicker over what pot of tea to get. Mitarashi tries to cajole Umino into getting more sake.

Kairi glances over at the list of sake. She can’t read any of them. “I mean, I’ve got nowhere to be tomorrow, but I dunno what you two are doing.”

“Tomorrow’s my last free day,” Mitarashi says. “After that I’ve got another mission, I’ll probably be gone ‘bout a week or so.”

“All the more reason why you shouldn’t have more sake!”

“But I have tomorrow,” she whines.

“How about you, Umino-san?”

“I think I’m going to be sticking around for a while. Natsumi-sensei wants us training for this winter’s chūnin exam.”

“Exam?”

She had disappeared not that long before her third star exam, she thinks. Or has she already taken it? The area around her arrival in Konoha is so fuzzy, she could’ve vanished during the exam for all she knows. Although if that happened, she hopes there’d be some sort of uproar, someone already here to bring her home.

Umino stares at her, before remembering. “Oh right, you’re not from a hidden village.”

Kairi shakes her head.

“Twice a year, once in the summer and once in the winter, the hidden villages get together to test genin to see if they’re ready to move onto the next rank, chūnin. We’re about two months away from the next one, which is being hosted here.”

“Oh. Are you taking the test, Mitarashi-san?”

“Nah, I made chūnin a while ago. I’ll be cheering Iruka on for sure though.” She stage whispers, “He and his squad failed, last year.”

Iruka flushes hot, right as the owner came back around for their order. He remains silent, even as Mitarashi orders a bottle of sake for the table, and dango for all of them.

“So this is the foreigner, huh.” The owner, eyes on Mitarashi’s, flicks her chin to Kairi.

“Mhm! Her name’s Kairi!”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Kairi says. “I’m Ueda Kairi.”

“Welcome to town. Don’t be a stiff, ‘kay?”

Mitarashi throws a cool arm around Kairi’s shoulders. “Oh don’t worry, I’ll be making sure she has a good time.”

“And I’ll be making sure she doesn’t get arrested,” Iruka adds.

Iitaka’s lip lifts. It could be considered a smile, if one had poor eyesight. “Good. I wouldn’t want the poor thing to feel unwelcome.”

“Your hospitality warms me. Thank you.”

The owner hooks her fingers under the collar of her shirt, pulling Kairi closer. “Samurai, huh? Never seen one as delicate as you before. Cute.”

Before she can figure out how to respond, Mitarashi pipes up, “isn’t she? I haven’t seen her work, but she’s just so tiny!”

The owner ruffles Kairi’s hair, pats her shoulders. Her hands are warm and rock solid. “You sure know how to pick ‘em, An-chan. Just call me if little ronin-hime needs anything.”

Kairi makes sure the owner was back in the kitchen before she speaks. “You’re not going to say anything about what happened tonight, right?”

Umino says, “it’s not like I saw anything.”

A little louder and with a wink, Mitarashi says, “I don’t wanna get chewed out for breaking curfew either.”

“Cool. It’s just, I’m new here, I don’t wanna cause any trouble. I just wanna lay low till my friends turn up. If they turn up.”

“I’m sure they will,” Mitarashi inists.

“I wish I could have your confidence. I don’t remember anything from that day.” She shrugs. “For all I know they’re already dead.”

Umino puts a hand atop hers. “You seem tough, Ueda-san. I’d be surprised if you survived and they didn’t. Patrols will probably be looking for them, and your sensei.”

“But… I didn’t ask them to do that. Why waste the manpower?”

“It’s not really a waste, they do the patrols anyway, now they just know to keep an eye out for them.”

“Yeah, it’s no big deal,” Mitarashi says. “We’re not heartless.”

For a brief moment she almost thinks her dining companion means heartless. The hope blooms and pushes the air out of her lungs before rationality returns to take the wheel. If there had been any heartless for miles she would’ve already felt it, and the Hokage had described the heartless in her memory as nightmarish monsters never before seen. Slim chance.

“You okay, Ueda-san?”

“Sorry, just spaced out for a second.”

Iitaka returns with a full bottle of sake under her arm and a platter of dango in both hands. “I put a couple extra on there for ronin-hime. She looks hungry.”

And she is, now that her attention is on it. Even with weeks here, her body is still refilling her mana stores, and all of her calories seem to go straight there, not to the rest of her body. Her hand goes for a skewer without the permission of her brain. Iitaka lets out a bellowing laugh.

“Thank you,” she says, then pulls a dumping off with her teeth. It’s sweeter than anything she’s ever eaten.

* * *

  
They stagger home drunk-flushed and grinning, a clumsy six legged beast. Even Iruka (they all had gotten to a first name basis halfway through the bottle) is relaxed now, laughing at Anko's dirty jokes and Kairi's barely untrue stories. After the dango they had ordered daifuku mochi, and after that a “scraps plate,” a platter of ugly, unsellable confections, treats made from leftover mochi, and tiny baked goods from the edges of pastry dough.

Sandwiched between them, Kairi feels at ease for the first time in ages; she's a teen again, getting into trouble. Even if she'd prefer to be home, the familiarity is enough for now.

As they round the corner to the barracks, they all freeze, the sound of a child crying sobering them up instantly.

"Let me in! Please!" A little blond boy is pressed against the door to the barracks, pounding his tiny little fists against the glass. "C'mon guys," he sniffles, "this isn't funny!"

Inside the barracks, on the other side, a cluster of children watch him and laugh. One in particular, a tall girl with fluffy brown hair, sneers at him. “No way, demon! You stay out there where you belong!”

Iruka sighs. “Not Naruto-kun again.”

“The little boy?”

“Yeah. He’s a good kid, but pretty much everyone his age hates him.”

Mitarashi says, “it’s Yamazaki’s fault, she let herself get biased and the kids picked up on it.”

“Really?” Yamazaki seemed almost motherly when Kairi had seen her earlier. It’s hard to believe that she’d be biased against such a young child. “How come?”

“Can’t tell you,” they both say.

“So, for some reason I can’t know about Yamazaki doesn’t like this kid?”

Iruka looks away. “Yes. She’s never liked him.”

“Well, that’s some bull.” She lurches away from her neighbors, the ground liquefying in her intoxication. “Hey kid! What’s wrong?”

Naruto turns away from the glass and looks at her. Beyond the snot and tears, shock is all over his face. “Who’re you?”

Realizing she must look like a maniac, she burns off the heady buzz of alcohol, leaving herself mostly sober. Even as she approaches, the boy doesn’t get much bigger; he almost shrinks.

“I’m Ueda Kairi,” she says gently. “I moved in today.”

“’M Uzumaki Naruto.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Naruto-kun. Why are you outside?”

He turns his head, and Kairi stares at the whisker-like, scratch-like marks on his cheek. “Hana locked the doors. They woke me up and pulled me outside and locked the doors.”

“Well, they’re just assholes, aren’t they?”

By the look on his face, Naruto has never heard a grown up curse before, at least so frankly. He stares at her like he can’t figure her out.

“I think I have an idea, Naruto-kun. You know that this isn’t the only way into the barracks, right?”

“No?”

“Well, I think that Hana and her pals didn’t plan very far ahead. They’re focusing all their energy on one point of entry. You get what I’m saying?”

“I think so,” Naruto says.

“They can stay here and keep that door locked all they want. But my room, up on the fifth floor, isn’t locked. We can just climb up that way, no harm, no foul.”

Iruka and Anko follow along without complaint, as Kairi heads to the wall her dorm is on. She can’t tell if they’re doing this because she’s being nice to Naruto, or in spite of it.

Naruto tugs on her sleeve, when they’re positioned underneath her balcony. “I don’t think I can climb that high,” he mumbles.

“That’s okay.” She holds her arms out. “I can carry you, no problem.”

“You don’t have to Kairi, I’ll do it,” says Iruka.

“It’s not like he’s heavy.” The kid probably doesn’t weigh enough for his age group anyway, and Kairi’s hauled Sora on her back through worse.

Iruka’s mouth shapes all sorts of words, but he doesn’t say any of them. In the end he just waves Naruto to her, who climbs up on her back like a baby monkey. “Can you even climb this?”

She can, but on instinct she just leaps up, letting herself go light as air. The concrete of her balcony slowly rises to meet her, and she walks through the still open door.

Naruto slides off her back. “Whoa! This dorm is awesome!”

His bare feet leave little dirty footprints, but Kairi doesn’t care.

“Thank you, Naruto-kun. I didn’t have time to decorate yet...”

“Are you gonna paint? Can I help?”

“Uh, I’m not sure yet.” Kairi can feel Iruka and Anko come up behind her. “But when I decide, you’ll be the first to know. Maybe I’ll paint my bedroom pink.”

“Is pink your favorite color?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s nice. Orange is better,” he says.

 

“To you it is. For me, pink makes me feel happy.” Pink is the color of the very first sunset I spent with Riku and Sora, she doesn’t say. Pink is the color of their souls combined, of their raw magic pooling in their hands clasped together. My whole heart is pink, she also doesn’t say.

“Orange is like the sunrise,” Naruto adds. She’s sure she didn’t say anything out loud. “Everything is new then. The whole village is orange.”

“I have to watch a sunrise here then. It must be beautiful.”

“Wake me up when you do! I’ll show you the best spot!”

Iruka, behind her, says, “Naruto-kun, do you want me to put you to bed?”

Kairi doesn’t flinch. In the nick of time she remembers that they all left through her dorm, that in all likelyhood they couldn’t get into their own rooms without going through hers. It’s damn close though.

“No!” Naruto boldly declares. “Kairi-neesan’s gotta do it. And I want a story!”

He lifts his arms expectantly, in the classic, little kid ‘up! up!’ position.

“I can get you a storybook from my dorm,” Anko offers.

“No, it’s fine, I know a few I can tell him.” She scoops up Naruto. “I can tell you all about my adventures!”

“Yay!”

Balanced on her hip he’s warm, warmer than Anko even. He’s like a little sun, glowing inside. Then she realizes that he’s not just warm, he’s something else entirely. Without meditating into heart-sense she can’t see it clearly, but up close like this, his soul, his heart, feels much bigger than any five year old she’s ever met before, and within it his stores of mana are vast. Possibly bigger than hers, which shouldn’t really be possible; the Hokage said there was no royalty on this world, or maybe it was Aihara who told her…

Either way, no royalty meant no princesses of heart, or princes. There shouldn’t be anyone like her here.

She shoves it out of her mind. It’s none of her business anyway. And it’s way past Naruto’s bedtime. As she carries him down the stairs, back down to the first floor, she lulls him to sleep with tales of her team’s heroics, adequately censored, but full of flourish. He’s already snoring by the time she tucks him in.

He immediately rolls into a ball on the bed, clutching his pillow like a friend, like a shield. In sleep, he’s still guarded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, if you remember this fic being in the past tense and you're suddenly confused, no, you're not crazy. I spent a great deal of time putting everything in the present tense, because that's by preferred writing style.

**Author's Note:**

> You’ve probably noticed by now that this version is a little darker. I don’t want to make it gratuitously dark and ruin childhoods, because I don’t believe in jerking off to other people’s suffering, but I’m really interested in the kinds of places tragedies like the nine-tails leave behind. It was enough to make an entire village hate a little baby, so I felt like digging into that environment. Or, to be clearer, the devastation in that environment was enough to make them hate said baby, but I’m not gonna make poor baby Naruto suffer gratuitously.
> 
> I’m also super interested in the kind of military culture hidden villages promotes, but again, I’m not going to go full on realistic and ruin goofy magic ninjas for everyone.
> 
> As such, some tweaks to canon characters are gonna be made to better work with this war torn, complicated landscape. What happens when kids grow up with the bare minimum of adult supervision? What happens when a culture deems kids adults at thirteen/fourteen? How do they move forward? Also, just, the timeline for Naruto background characters is ill defined and wobbly, and I’m probably gonna re-work backstories as necessary to tighten the whole thing up.
> 
> I’ve also added/intend to add some worldbuilding regarding the world outside of the hidden villages. Please note that the last time I’ve watched Naruto to completion was when I was fourteen, and I haven’t ever watched the filler. Basically, I’m going hog wild over here, and no one can stop me.
> 
> As a general rule: if I ever go against canon, I’m either doing it on purpose, or I’ve never heard of it. Either way, I plan on being consistent with the world I’m working with here. (This is a good rule for all my fics, actually.)
> 
> This story is still about Kairi, and Sakura, of course, but I’ve had a million feelings about the Naruto universe, and I’m trying my best to shape the raw material we get from the series into a more cohesive unit. 
> 
> Also, this is totally unrelated and not really that important but Yamazaki isn’t smoking tobacco she’s smoking weed. Just had to put that out there.


End file.
